Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Day 331 : My life story and my hamartia

[I've got to say that penning my thoughts down became a lot easier when they are bite-sized pieces on Dayre! Pardon the incoherency, but I guess that's what makes a personal blog a blog, and not a magazine article, or novel, or any expensive piece of literature out there. My apologies for the poor image quality too.]

Dear Dayre,

Just one of those days when I'm up and showered and breakfasted but don't feel like getting down to work! ;__; You know, I've always had a huge huge problem. My problem is that I've been diagnosed with chronic laziness since young -_-

At the end of every 6 months in school, you always get back a report card with your grades and also Remarks from your presiding form teacher.

I don't mean to brag, but I was a pretty intelligent kid.

Back in our primary school days, you didn't need to study much to score good grades, you just needed to be somewhat a fast learner with a bit of common sense.

(I hear it ain't so easy nowadays, so Thank God we had it better back in our times!)

Back in Primary 2, life was easy.

I barely studied and did the minimum amount of homework, but continually scored As and got amongst the top few places in class.

But,As I grew older and still remained complacent about studying, my peers started catching up, or I started falling behind.And by Primary 6, all my teachers only had one thing to say about me:

Hey, I was still scoring pretty good grades and I was in the top performing class! My teachers knew better though. They knew I couldn't be bothered to work hard, I had a terrible attitude towards studying and I was just. Plain. Lazy.

My friends like to call me "Ti Gong Kia" (which means blessed by the gods) and I have to somewhat agree.I still managed to scrape through the PSLE and landed myself a place in a pretty decent school, with options to take a third language and higher mother tongue.

However,There comes a time when just being slightly more intelligent than the average kid doesn't cut it anymore. So in Secondary School, it became a downhill journey into the pits.

This led to my most absymally poor grades in Secondary 3, when I failed three subjects, made it to the honorable ranking of last in class, and wow, 37 marks out of 100 for Add Maths!(Of course, being the bookworm who would rather pore over novels and books than do homework, my English, Literature and History Grades were still above average. Anything that didn't require studying or working hard was easy for me.)My poor parents didn't know what to do with me.

It was a melodramatic day when we came home from the teacher-parents meet session.Lots of crying, shouting, and my beloved guitar and mobile phone eventually got flung into smithereens by angry Daddy Goh, the 无辜受害者 (innocent bystanders) of my many failures.

As I grew into adulthood, I came to have another self-realization amidst my battered and scarred growing up.Yes I am lazy. But I also am incredibly single-minded when it comes to doing things I love.I can never conform to societal norms.I can never force myself to do what I don't love.

It got to a point when I had abit of a crisis.For those who don't know what they want to do in life, they just study very hard right?They do their best to get good grades, and to advance their studies. At least that's what your parents tell you to do. The more qualifications you have, the more you can do with your life.You can be a doctor! Or a lawyer! Maybe even a lecturer! Or you can work for the government, it's a stable job with high bonuses! (God forbid)

If there's one thing I envy, it is those who know exactly what they want in life, and how to get it.I knew what I didn't want to do: Study.And I ended up as... An illustrator.

I do have one very awesome quality though.If I set my mind to doing something, you can be sure I'd put my efforts into making it something pretty darned good.And if I do say so myself, in my short-spanned career as an illustrator/artist, I earned a lot of respect from my peers, managed to get into the most prestigious art studio in Singapore, and worked with international names that would be any digital artist's dream.

But there are feelings you can't hide from yourself, and nagging self-doubt at the back of my head.I knew it then, maybe I knew it from the start.No creativity. Not enough talent. They whispered into my ear. And most vicious of all,

“You are not working hard enough to deserve any success.”

There it came again. My hamartia. My one fatal flaw.Laziness.

I quit the digital art industry at 21 years old.How scary was it?No qualifications. No papers. No money. No f**king anything.No f**king idea what I could do with the rest of my life (I still don't have any idea now) Lost-er than a lost sheep.
(Oh my God. I don't know why this is turning into such a long and pointless entry. I'm so sorry.)

I'm going to stop here for abit to recollect my thoughts. And also give you a chance to quit reading this entry because it is a lot of mental diarrhea and quite possibly no one even wants to read my rubbish.

If you'd like me to carry on.. Just leave me a comment, okay? If not, I think this is ten thousand words too many for a Dayre entry ^^; ^^; ^^;

***

Carrying on,I used to attend church in my teenage years. It has been some time though, since I've stepped into a church. I still believe in God.But somehow, maybe I'm not looking in the right places for Him.Now, I find God in music and singing.Back to attending church. My church was one of those huge charismatic churches (I'd leave you to guess which one but you'd probably hit the nail on the head) which had huge raring services, with hardcore worship sessions and altar calls.

Once upon an altar call, I made my way down the aisle, right to the front of the stage. God was calling for his lost sheep, they proclaimed. And God would heal every hurt and every sorrow in your heart.I had a leader pray for me, and he/she (I can't remember anymore) said..

At the same time that I was feeling like a huge impostor in the house of God, (an emotionally detached part of me was looking down coldly upon the scene and asking me, what the he** are you doing here? So blasphemous), another part of me started breaking down. And I cried and I cried. Because all I could feel was my fear, fear of being a failure, fear of rejection, fear of never being good enough for anyone. Never loved enough. Nothing I ever did was good enough.

I left the church eventually, because to be honest, I just couldn't feel God. And again, I wondered if it was for lack of trying. Was it because I didn't pray every night? Or I didn't read the Bible like a good Christian should? Again, was I just too lazy?I hate to say this, but I felt judged and uncomfortable amongst my Christian church friends. Until today, I only keep in contact with that one friend from my church days. I still thank God for all the blessings He has given me, though.

When I was 20, I met a boy, and fell in love. Actually, he fell in love with me first.He told me that I was good enough, I was amazing, and I was worthy.Honestly, I think YZ changed me in more ways than I would have thought possible. I was so afraid to love another human being, because deep down, I thought that I would end up being hurt. I didn't feel that I was worthy of another person's love, this flawed person that I was/am.

The first few times he held my hand, it sounds silly to say it: I didn't even dare to HOLD his hand properly, I just sort of let him do all the holding. Lolol. Like my hand was a limp piece of meat like that ^^;Eventually, YZ finally gave me enough courage to put myself out there, to open my heart to love properly and wholly. He soothed my fear of rejection with a whole lot of love.I'm still a lil awkward with expressing my love for my family and friends, but trust me, it's much better now!

If there's one thing I realize, it is that humans fear the unknown.We are always more comfortable in our sheltered little safety zone, than to put ourselves out in the big and scary unknown.But at the end of the day, it is true that we are nothing more than minuscule human beings in a huge universe, and our time on earth is short and fleeting. (Whether there is an afterlife or not, that is open for discussion but has no bearing for now)

And through my struggles to seek self-worth and to love, to face my fears of existentialism and failure, one thing has put itself across to me, huge and bold.

“Seek happiness in the form of simplicity and love. Because life is short.”

Cast aside fear and doubt.Believe in yourself, that you are a person who is a blessing and not a failure.It is not wrong to have weaknesses and flaws. Understand yourself better, and work with the best parts of yourself.Ultimately, live every single day happy, because an unhappy life is a life not worth living.Do what makes you happy: as long as you can sleep easy on your conscience every night.I believe that is a life worth living.

Dear reader,

If you've read thus far (and that is REALLY REALLY far) from the start of this entry to here,I just wanted to share.I am STILL lazy. (Hehehe.) But I just don't beat myself up about it. I find that I work best doing what I enjoy doing, and that has somehow miraculously guided me to life as it is now. I'm NOT a failure. I just enjoy reading books. And writing pointless entries.

I can bring joy and happiness to loved ones around me, by being a thoughtful daughter, a loving girlfriend, and a supportive friend. I may even be able to connect to a dear reader like you, and make you feel better in some way today.That's the kind of things that are important in life.

Glad that I don't sound too emo at the end of so much deep thoughts. I'm honestly a very positive person! Of course, I still have to battle my inner demons. Maybe I'm not pretty enough, not funny enough a blogger, not skinny beautiful nor young like all the other bloggers and blogshop owners are.But I count my lucky stars for all that I have and all that I am now.

“俗语说, 比上不足比下有余.”

Yina says hi

Welcome to my blog! My name is Yina Goh, and I own online boutique The Velvet Dolls. I'm passionate about travel, fashion, food, beauty and music. I love photography and taking photos to document my everyday!

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